Barbara G. Tucker is the author of five novels: Bringing Abundance Back, The Unexpected Christmas Visitors, Traveling Through, Cross Road, and Legacy. She is also a college administrator, professor of communication, mother, wife, ESL instructor, Bible teacher, and follower of Jesus Christ. She lives in Northwest Georgia.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Breakpoint from Colson Center/Prison Fellowship for July 26, 2016

I feel this needs to be rebroadcast. Here it is.

When Chicken Little said the sky is falling, we all laughed. Well, maybe it’s time we stopped laughing.

It seems Chicken Little may be on to something.

My friend Rod Dreher is as
sane and stable as anyone I know, and he’s saying, in essence, that the
sky is falling. I reference his new article in The American
Conservative, called “The Coming Christian Collapse.”

He begins by saying that the
two-thirds of millennials who were raised religiously unaffiliated
still have no denominational identity today. Unlike previous
generations, they’re not joining churches as they get older and raise
kids.

Second, Rod says,
“Millennials, even those who identify as Christians, are shockingly
illiterate, both in terms of what the Bible says and more generally
regarding what Christianity teaches.” This growing biblical illiteracy
has led to a moral decline of our young people into consumerism, drug
abuse, sexual liberation, and civic and political disengagement.

Third, Rod says that the
working class has largely abandoned the church, and that if the middle
class follows suit, as appears likely, the church will be in a world of
hurt. He quotes the late Michael Spencer, who warned of a coming evangelical
collapse: “We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people
an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular
onslaught.”

These are chilling words. We
talk a lot on BreakPoint about external threats to our souls, and
rightly so. But as Abraham Lincoln once said in another context, “If
destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”

Yet I am hopeful, as every
Christian must be. As my colleague John Stonestreet says so often, we
are part of the grand story of the universe. And God is the author of
that story. Yes, as Peter reminds us, we will have to suffer “various
trials.” But why? “So that the authenticity of [our] faith . . . may
result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1
Peter 1:6-7)”.

This is not new. Back in the
‘30s and ‘40s, German Christians had to take a clear stand or be
absorbed or compromised by evil—and some, like Bonhoeffer, chose the
cross. Look at our brothers and sisters in the Middle East. Now, I’m not
ready to say we American Christians may soon have to apostasize or die,
but I can’t help but think of the words of the late Cardinal George,
who said he would die in his bed, his successor would die in prison, and
his successor will die a martyr in the public square.

So, what do we do? We
repent—repent of our sins, the sins of the church, and, yes, the sins of
our nation: the sins of pride, racism, sexual libertinism, greed, lust
for power, and a callous disregard for human life among them.

Second, we must recommit
ourselves to Jesus. We need to seek the mind of Christ, to think and to
act as Christians, to know our Bible and to live by it in the power of
the Spirit, “making the most of your time, for the days are evil.” We
must commit anew to forming a biblical worldview and evaluating
everything in our lives in light of it.

We must recommit our time
and our treasure to evangelism, missions, and Christ’s command in
Matthew 25 to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and
visit the prisoner. Christian faith is not a nice add-on to our agendas, it’s the very marrow of our lives.

The question is this: Will we love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind, and our neighbor as ourselves?

But don’t be intimidated by the
internal and external challenges we face. Remember that God can do very
much with very little, and that success doesn’t depend on political or
cultural power. While the Church may face trials, the gates of hell will
not prevail, and Christ’s vi